Against a Mage

Introduction

My name is Cyberhawk. I am a ranked player who primarily plays conquest. I bounce between Support, Jungle, and Solo.

This is my second season 5 guide, and I intend to update it, so feel free to comment things that should be added/edited.

Pros / Cons

Trust in me!

Pros:

Excellent Clear

Very High Damage

Best passive in the game

Strong team-fight presence

Cons:

Long cooldowns

Low Peel, almost no CC

Low sustain

Relies on multiple abilities for every combo

VERY reliant on CDR

.

Skills

Onwards, to victory!

Valient Leap

Passive - To Victory!

To Victory! isn’t an ability you really have to pay attention to. Once your team finishes the ‘quests’ to activate it, they all will effectively be getting a free tier 2 item with no conditions or downtime ( Thousand Fold Blade and Enchanted Ring). Everyone can rotate faster, pressure more and hit harder. This passive is incredible, if hard to notice since it isn’t very flashy. You may just find yourself winning more fights than you otherwise would.

1 - Rend

Rend is Nike's main clear and poke tool, so level it first, and its honestly outstanding. Combined with Plan of Action, this ability does 570 + 120% damage. Thats comparable to a lot of ultimates. In addition, the protection shred applies to the third hit, making it hit even harder then they expect.

After level 6, Nike can full clear a wave with a boosted Rend, as long as she isn't stunned during it. This gives her some of the fastest clear of any warrior, allowing you to bully your opponent out of lane and put pressure on their side of the jungle.

In teamfights, prioritize hitting the same target with multiple strikes (multiple targets if you can manage it). If you can hit the ADC with all 3, the shred and disarm will likely be a death sentence.

2 - Plan of Action

Plan of Action is a very unique ability. On its own, it simply gives Nike her only form of sustain in a bit of HP5. However, it boosts Nike's other abilities to extremely potent levels.

The specific boosts are discussed more in those abilities, but keep in mind that you should usually save this ability for Rend or Sentinel of Zeus, and it doesn't go on cooldown until the boost occurs.

I prefer to level this 2nd for the Cooldown and HP5 increases.

3 - Valiant Leap

Valiant Leap is Nike's only hard CC, and it isn't the easiest to even land. A slow-travelling leap with a knock-up, this is your chase, set-up, and peel, but it is mostly your escape from ganks. This is the biggest downside of this ability: you constantly need to use it for different things.

Stopping an escape in a team fight
Getting in range for a Rend kill
Jumping over a wall to escape
Landing on the mid-laner to save your mid's life

The only time I Plan of Action this is when urgency is needed (like example 4 above).

You can level this 3rd or 4th, both just add damage to skills not primarily used for damage.

4 - Sentinel of Zeus

Sentinel of Zeus is a fairly weak ultimate unless boosted. A tickle of damage, a very slight slow, and a health shield (350 at level 5). The shield gets much better late game as your health pool increases to be over 1000 extra HP (depending on item choices), making you a solid tank in teamfights.

If you do initiate a teamfight, I highly recommend boosting this. It doubles the slow, and adds another chunk of ~500 health to the shield. Both of these make you incredibly annoying to shift.

You can level this 3rd or 4th, both just add damage to skills not primarily used for damage.

Items

All According to Plan

Starting Items

Warrior's Blessing is your starter item of choice on Nike for the added defense and sustain. You have no issues doing damage, but the sustain is extremely helpful.

My preference is Breastplate or Kusari (based on what damage type you are laning against) to be able to rush a CDR item. However, some other items have their situations.

If you plan on rushing Shifter's Shield for the early pressure, Round Shield can be a great choice. If you are against a very high sustain mage/guardian like Artio or Zhong, a Pestilence rush may be the only chance you have.

Finally, Glowing Emerald lets you be slightly tankier against a magical solo and a physical jungler, and lets you buy 4 potions.

A Note that most of these items only let you buy 3 potions. Unless you have good reason Breastplate is a great choice simply because it can come with 6 potions instead.

Relics

Team Support

Level 1

Your level one relic is mostly down to personal preference and team composition. In addition to the 3 above, Heavenly Wings and Cursed Ankh are viable choices.

Teleport Glyph is the outlier here in a list of team relics. I actually really like this choice in season 5 with the bigger map and longer laning phase. It is a bit of a crutch, but on a god with no real sustain like Nike it can let you return to base to heal fairly often. Make sure to upgrade it once your tier 1 towers fall.

Level 12

Your level twelve relic is all about what your team needs at this point. Any of these 4 are good choices. Pick your poison for better chase potential, Defense, Disruption, and Anti-Heal respectively.

99% of the time, you want to build one of these two items first on Nike. Long cooldowns + multi ability combos means this girl needs CDR like a gamer needs coffee.

You can maybe make a case for Shifter's Shield or Pestilence, but you need to have a really good plan and strong grasp of the god before you build either of these over CDR.

Item 3

This is a solid choice to give you that sustain you are sorely lacking. I have often severely undervalued this item myself, and with how long the laning phase often is now the added sustain can be crucial. If you get really fed early, you can skip this to make room for more damage later.

Other 3 Items

Solo laners have a lot of flexibility in their builds, and most of it is around counter building for your opponent and the eventually teamfights. So, you dont have much of a core item list, instead you have 11 useful items and 4 slots to put them in. Have fun!

In general, remember:

You need at least 30% CDR to be useful.
You need a solid base of protections and health.
Penetration helps your biggest strength: Damage.
Attack speed works with your Cleave Auto's.

Items 3,4,5, and 6

Options

The tankiest single item in the game, this is a great choice for 3rd, 4th, or even 5th item to boost your tankiness and possibly make room for some damage item(s) later. however, you do need to stack it, so I wouldn't build this if you are already falling behind at this stage of the game and can't expect many kills or assists.

Mantle of Discord is the big daddy of split-defense items, giving a massive amount of survivablity, a get out of jail free card, and a bit of that sweet CDR. Expensive but worth its cost, you may have trouble getting the passive to proc at the right time.

Spirit Robe is the preferred choice if the enemy team has a lot of CC.

If you have to build Pestilence over Genji's Guard, I would replace Hide of Urchin with one of these to make up for the lost CDR

This is a great pick up if the enemy team has lifesteal or healing. Can even be combined with Genji's if they are magic heavy. Hel or Freya on the enemy team? get this.

This is my favorite single damage item on Nike. Decently tanky while giving her a total of 40 protection reduction. This can make Rend hit like a freight train, but dont build it too early or mage's will nuke you in teamfights.

If you feel you don't have the lockdown potential you need, grab this item. Decent amount of health combined with a slow on your cleave auto attacks is great and lockdown in teamfights or even in the middle of waves.

Gameplay

Seek Out Their Plans

Warding

There is much I can say about warding, however the following video by EmilZy is more in depth than I can fit into this guide, and while he is a support player, most of the information is still helpful. It is long, but very worth it.

Early Game

You are going to be starting in lane. Kill the first 2 waves and then grab your blue buff (the jungler should have dropped it about when the 2nd waves meet). This should be easy with Rend and the cleave auto attacks.

Get back to lane and play it fairly safe until level 5. Try to hit them at least once every 10 seconds to stack Warrior's Blessing. Remember, you have great clear, but you have **** sustain, so taking poke hurts a lot.

Regardless, the priority is to stay in lane until you have 1600 gold for boots (without dying of course). At that point, back and get boots, return to your lane and proceed to bully HARD.

At this point you are Rend clearing the whole wave, probably poking your opponent for 1/3 of their health in the process.

Ward that half of the jungle, especially their blue buff camp. ALWAYS WARD.

Mid Game

You stay in lane for a lot longer than the other roles, and this is where Nike comes online. With your boots and first CDR item, you can really start pressuring out your opponent. Remember to call when they are MIA, save Valiant Leap for untimely ganks, and you should be able to take the tower without too much issue.

Once you get your 2nd post-boot item online, you can start rotating to pressure the midlane and help secure objectives. If you can gank midlane when they are near your tower, a full ability burst should secure the kill.

It is also around this time that the first part of your passive should come online.

Ward your half of the jungle, especially near Pyromancer and the blue buff. ALWAYS WARD.

Late Game

By late game you should have four objectives to complete: Take down Fire Giant, Gold Fury, enemy phoenixes and the enemy Titan. Stay near your ADC and midlaner, to peel for them and be a general threat.

Your role in teamfights is disruption and blocking. Knock-up, Disarm, Shred, and Slow. You are an excellent initiator: Valiant Leap -> Plan of Action -> Sentinel of Zeus -> Rend the biggest threat. This spreads a bunch of damage around, gives you a shield, and slows their whole team. Follow up with a team fight relic and you can instantly send them into a retreat.

Conclusion

Nike can truly be the God of Victory, helping your entire team do better whether you are near them or not.

I hope this guide was helpful to a few of you. See you on the Battlefield!

Quick Comment

Coming back to this guide (sorry for all the comments, xD), I thought I might add a comment about the starting build.

You recommend starting with a Warrior's Blessing and a tier 1 item of certain trees. However, I really feel that you're putting yourself at a disadvantage by not picking up a Chalice of Healing. This item gives tons of value (750 Health in essence), especially for a solo laner. Also, I don't feel like the Mana Potions are needed as much either, as you will most likely have your blue buff active at all times.

This is an option, but like in my other comment, I also think Genji's Guard should be considered, and in fact feel that it's a better option, as it provides higher magical protection along with some health and an amazing amount of MP5.

If you do get Genji's, you could consider a variety of other CDR options (meaning you don't have to go with BoV)...yes, you'll have lower CDR for a longer time, but CDR doesn't necessarily need to be maxed. After boots and Genji's, you can consider Mail of Renewal as you said, but also Spirit Robe, Relic Dagger, Witchblade, etc. Combine Genji's with a couple of those and you get a nice 30% CDR and a bunch of utility in various ways.

None of your item choices are wrong and neither are mine, all I meant was to point out different options but we're going to have to agree to disagree on maxing cdr. And yeah genji and spirit robe might be out but there's still pestilence and bulwark of hope - also solid options.
Also none of us are wrong about skill levels, we just have different mind sets. I've seen myself get the leap Early - erlang shen for example, you can bet your *** I get leap 2nd.

My mindset is all about fast wave clear and gaining Lvls, with 40%cdr I can clear my blue pop plan of action go back to lane and rend is ready again to clear the wave. Farm farm farm - get my items online quickly.

I think you're stressing to much about the jungeler. It's a very situational aspect.

Maxing CDR between BoV and Jotunn's isn't a horrible idea, but it limits the other items you can consider past that point.

Firstly, it delays getting the 2nd protection type... If you in fact got BoV 2nd to counter a physical solo, getting Jotunn's 3rd means you won't have any magical protection until at least item 4,in case it's a magical jungle or you rotate into mid for fights or ganks.

Secondly, items like Genji's and Spirit Robe are basically out the door if you get Jotunn's,and those are very solid items.

Thirdly, her base damage is pretty good, so although an offensive item is helpful for damage output, she's pretty decent as-is. IF you were to get better use out of an offensive item, it would probably be better earlier to have with that early lane dominance, but Nike is likely to lose out to a decent amount of other solo laners anyway and it's a bit risky.

Generally then, I'd suggest against Jotunn's as a core/set item unless you're just absolutely dominating and are very ahead in levels and such.

Should definitely level plan of action second for better wave clear and if the jungeler isn't making frequent visits to your lane, pop a second point into rend at lvl 3. Do this and you'll be clearing waves before lvl 6 ;) and you should be out farming your opponent. If you don't feel safe then get leap 3rd but always go with plan 2nd.

Thing is, at level 2/3, it's not about pushing lane...you're still going to be mostly concentrating on clearing your own wave with multiple basics after you use Rend...even with a buffed Rend via Plan of Action, you're still going to be likely cutting even, unless maybe if you're facing someone like Amaterasu (or heaven forbid, Loki).

If you aren't willing to meet at the mid-point where the two minion waves come together, then you're going to be fighting the minions at your tower and losing at least some farm. If you're at that mid-point, then depending on the Solo/Jungle combo and the support of your own Jungler, then that's far enough from your tower that you can still get ganked if you don't have Valiant Leap.

Also at level 2/3, you might not have backed yet...you seriously always pick up Wards at the very beginning? I don't see not having wards at the very beginning of the game = "you deserve to be ganked."

This is the reason that I don't pay attention to skill leveling charts on guides. How you level your skills is entirely situational and varies depending on the matchup.

Generally, yes, you can delay your leap a bit if you feel safe doing so. However, if the enemy comp is (for example) something like a Hercules solo with Horrific Emblem and a Thanatos jungle, I'd probably invest a point into the leap.

Also, jungle routes right now are, for the most part, pretty predictable. Jungle starts at speed, does the small back harpy camp, then clears blue. Then, they usually stick their head into solo lane for a second or two to see what's happening. Your friendly jungler will most likely take this same route, meaning that you will have backup to dissuade them from making any moves. After a brief meetup period/wave share, the junglers head toward mid, not to be seen from again for a little while.

So, all in all, I wouldn't worry so much about a gank that it sacrifices my waveclear for it, unless there is a notable matchup/relic combo that causes me to reconsider.

DV, in that game I was in Solo as Nike and you were support Sylvanus, what happened with my first death was that I hadn't seen the Ao Kuang the entire time, so I put a point into Plan of Action 2nd, at least as far as I remembered. It was a while, but at one point, he did in fact come over and I hadn't backed at all at that point...both Xing and I were just trading blows and were over 1/2 health, and the Ao ganked me, and I just know I didn't have my leap.

So I was in fact judging based on situation and I made the wrong call. Generally would have gotten the leap 2nd, but felt confident. Probably won't skip leap 2nd from this point forward unless it's a serious mismatch and we're already getting kills.

If you didn't see the enemy jungler on the mini-map at any point during the game, you should not have been pushed up that far in lane at half health (Also, how were you half-health against a Xing Tian at level 2? Did you not have Chalice of Healing?).

To me, this is a general rule of solo lane. Your knowledge of enemy jungler position dictates how you position yourself in lane (at least until the point when you have your escape and wards). If, for example, the enemy jungler was in mid, and your mid gets eyes on the jungler to put him on the mini-map, and you see it, you have freedom to be aggressive in Solo for a while. But if you don't know where the jungler is, it is always best to assume he is right around the corner, and position yourself accordingly.

Also, if you opt for stronger waveclear over your leap, you can hang back and clear the wave closer to your tower before the minions step into your tower radius, so you won't lose out on any farm. This way, you will be in a more defensive position if the jungler were to try to gank you.

It's kind of hard to explain without a video.

(Also, I noticed that you didn't build any cooldowns on Nike that game. How did The Crusher feel on her?)

Duotem (the bastard) has already given me a hard time on my Nike build that game. Said it gave him cancer or something. I don't blame him. Not really sure what I was thinking.

Anyway, I could be remembering incorrectly. I may have put a 2nd point into rend and been at level 3 when I got ganged. I know I wasn't too far up. Maybe mid point where the minions meet. Or maybe I'm full of it. I don't know. It's Sunday and I'm working at the convention and I'm drunk because we hosted an open bar. I'll follow up later with a real response XD

Yeah, I totally don't remember what the actual situation was. I think I just thought, "okay Xing has some healing in his kit, so I'll grab Pest...the health and magical protection will be good against his and Ao's damage, and the anti-heal will also help."

Then of course I just bought The Crusher because I was being stupid and was thinking about wave clear. Dammit, this is getting WAY too much attention!!!

You've got a nice template going for your various guides. Some quick comments:

I usually would level my escape at level 2 when the god has an escape, but, depending, would you maybe level Plan of Action 2nd if you find you're not getting interrupted? Would really help your clear pressure.

With the current meta jungler starts, I always level the leap at 2 in case the jungler ganks after their first camps instead of going to mid.

Sacrificing 1 level's time of pressure for that easy on mind actually lets me play more aggressive than Plan of Action would

Nemean Lion could definitely be considered, I always find myself choosing Void Shield over it for the kill potential with Rend's insane damage though. I actually prefer Witchblade over Midgardian here for the Attack Speed and CDR

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